by Nick Cole
And then there was Jackson, whom he’d left onshore.
It’s just a dog, he reminded himself, as he worked the keyboard commands to keep the schooner tacking out into the water beyond the island. And it’s not even a real dog. It’s just an in-game pet.
Fishmael held course at the large wheel from the back of the schooner, which was now bounding higher and higher as it crested rising waves and headed out into the rough waters in front of the pitching bow. Digital spray leapt over the deck in cascades and drenched Fish’s HUD in high-resolution foamy washes of seawater.
Well, thought Fish the game designer. At least I got that part right.
Someone from the deck of the mega-yacht opened up with an AK-47. Small sudden plumes erupted in the rising waves ahead of Fish as rounds zipped off under the water and the waves.
Warning shots.
Warning me against doing what, exactly, Fish was thinking when Peabody leaned in over his shoulder back in the suite. In real-time.
“Sorry, Mr. Fishbein, but you have to see this.”
“Kinda busy…”
“I know, but this is seriously creepy.” She took charge of Fish’s keyboard, and a few seconds later, she’d switched screens to a live stream from right outside the Labs. A small camera mounted above the entrance looked out on a sea of robots and drones, mindlessly crowding forward into the camera lens. Their faces were almost familiar and then alien all at once. From out of the mechanical press came a black and yellow construction DemolitionBot wielding a big and shiny spinning saw. A moment later, its diamond-tipped wheel began to spin, soundlessly since there was no audio on the stream, and it began to cut into the PlateGlass at the Pascal entrance. The entrance Fish had walked through less than twelve hours ago when things had been much, much different.
“Okay, so what the hell is that all about?” asked Fish.
“I suppose you mean the whole scene and not just the automated marble countertop cutting system that’s sawing its way in?”
How did she even know what that thing actually did? wondered Fish, and then knew it wasn’t important. A personal assistant like Peabody Case was the type who knew everything so you didn’t have to.
Fish merely pressed his lips together and nodded for her to continue.
“I think they’re trying to break in,” posited Peabody matter-of-factly. “If this is just a hack attack, then they’re going to an awful lot of trouble to physically enter the Labs. A crazy amount of trouble. Not to mention, we’re probably going to…” She stopped and looked at Fish as though realizing she was about to say something that might offend someone. Which was an important and must-have skill in the current times of perpetual outrage and fines by the misdemeanor-level Micro-Aggression Courts.
“Die,” she finished on a much-subdued note.
“One second…” Fish took control of the keyboard and brought Island Pirates back up. His schooner was headed down into a deep blue trough between two massive cresting waves. Bullets were flying everywhere. Bullets were chewing up the planks of the schooner, slapping into the rising wall of water ahead, and racing off through the backs of the seafoam translucent waves.
And then Fish saw the shadowy outline of the Megalodon. It was inside the wave the schooner was headed directly into. A dark mass. A monstrous shape. Distorted and terrifyingly clear all at once.
He slewed his avatar’s POV around and saw the massive Rapper’s Delight mega-gangsta yacht bearing down on his tiny schooner. The tip of the island sandbar lay in the distant background. A player called SnakeEyez leaned out from the bow of the yacht, firing into the schooner with a blazing AK-47 from which a stream of shells flew away like a flailing, falling chorus line of tiny brass dancers.
“What are we going to do, Mr. Fishbein?” asked Peabody Case, oblivious to the chaos in-game all around Fishmael.
“Well,” said Fish, then paused to yank the wheel of the schooner away from the massive shark, but still keep the boat upright as it was suddenly dragged rapidly to the top of the next wave. “I’m trying to get a message out, but first…” Now the schooner was headed back down into the next ocean trough far below. On screen it was like falling down the side of tall and crumbling watery-green building. “I’ve got to avoid these pirates,” whispered Fish as he struggled with a momentary bout of vertigo. “And… there’s this dinosaur shark I now seriously regret putting in this game.”
“Oh, sorry,” said Peabody in the barest peep. “Sorry. I’ll let you play. Go get ’em, Mr. Fishbein!”
Fish saw the gigantic shark coming, racing really, out of the wave he was headed straight into. Blue water and seafoam washed across his HUD as the hull of the schooner boomed through the speakers from the force of striking the water at the bottom of the deep trough.
Before he even knew what was happening, the massive shark shot through the wave ahead and above and crashed into the Rapper’s Delight mega-gangsta yacht just behind, its cyclopean jaws wide open. Fish even heard the crrrruuunch-rawwwrr effect he’d had sound-designed for his special monster.
By the time Fish turned around, he was on the far side of the next wave. Rapper’s Delight was no longer in view. It wasn’t until the top of the wave that he saw the remains of the yacht. The massive shark was buried deep into the swamped aft section, dragging a player gamertagged RoboThug out into the water as the bow section sank beneath the waves amid realistic flotsam and debris.
With the Carcharodon megalodon, a bigger boat wouldn’t have mattered.
Fish altered his course and pointed the schooner back toward the inner channel, away from the deeper and darker parts of the ocean. A few minutes later, he rounded the point of the tiny island and turned north again, the schooner now slicing peacefully through the tranquil waters on the inner side of the outer islands. He saw Jackson running back and forth on the shore, woofing at the schooner, or perhaps at the wind, Fish wasn’t sure which, and he issued the “Call Pet” command. The dog came bounding out into the lazy surf and swam to the schooner as it passed alongside the lonely island. Then Fish turned north and set course for Porto Tortuga.
“Yes!” squealed Peabody Case. Fish thought she was talking about him getting away from the pirates and the shark. But she wasn’t. She dashed back inside his office, her high heels chuff chuff chuffing as she crossed the hard floor. She took control of his keyboard once more and switched back to the security feed. Massive steel doors were sliding down from unseen seams in the marble halls and ceilings, sealing the labs from within.
“The bots are on the other side,” she sighed with relief. “We’re safe for now, even if they cut through the PlateGlass, which is supposedly impossible.”
“What about that Todd guy?” asked Fish, meaning Roland.
***
Robots were coming through the glass walls as Roland led the others back to the main core of the UltraGym. A series of unmoving escalators went back and forth down into the darkness below, leading to the Thunderdome food courts and the tunnel to the lagoon.
Evan Fratty was shouting at them as they ran.
“There’s a tunnel between the Labs and the beach down there, so employees can catch some quick sun and fun between meetings. We can use that to get into the Labs.” He screamed in a voice that was half terror-stricken tour guide, half battle-scarred drill sergeant.
A dog-sized CrabBot, obviously some kind of waste management drone, came scuttling along the main corridor after them.
“Run!” shrieked Roland.
Everyone was already running. Except Rapp, who pulled the sawed-off shotgun, loaded with cut shells, and fired. He blew off three of the crab’s legs and it spun about for a brief second before it began to drag itself toward them once more.
Evan Fratty and Roland had already started down the first silent escalator.
“C’mon!” cried Deirdre back at Rapp. “There’re too many of them.”
She was right—other bots were coming out of the darkness from every direction like a horde of zombies in some big budget movie that ultimately proved forgettable. In fact, some of them even looked like zombies. Rapp broke the barrel and loaded two more shells. Three zombie-bots shambled mechanically toward the escalator.
“C’mon!” shrieked Deirdre again.
Rapp grabbed her hand and ran. But the zombies, though seemingly wonky and uncoordinated, were moving in a surprisingly swift and direct intercept path. Rapp stopped, pushed Deirdre behind him, and fired, one-handed, with both barrels.
Components and wires exploded away from ragged synthetic rubber skin made to look necrotic. Mechanical chassis skeletons were revealed beneath rubberized faces and clothed torsos where the blast had done its damage. One of the zombie-bots waved awkwardly at Rapp and Deirdre as they flung themselves down the escalator toward the high-end food court several levels below.
***
Fanta, whose real name was not Fanta, watched a live stream on her BAT-broadcasted Wi-Fi linked to a military-grade smartphone. BAT was coordinating real-time images from frontline troops with overlays of the immediate tactical situation in and around WonderSoft. SILAS, Fanta’s contractor, was feeding her images and giving her movement commands as she closed in on the Labs.
She was on her knees behind a statue near the Pascal entrance. That was where the robot army had managed to break through, only to be shut out by the emergency reinforcement security doors they’d suspected might be in the facility, though they’d had no proof.
A new text message, the only way she ever communicated with her employer, “Mr. Skynet,” appeared on her smartphone screen.
Proceed to UltraGym and access lower levels. Survivors there. Infiltrate and access Labs with group.
Fanta who was not Fanta tapped the thumbs-up button, holstered her silenced 9mm, and ran, leaping hedges and stone steps like a track star on a mission.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The director was arguing with the producers and suits from both Paramount and Twitch that they needed to turn this episode into a “disaster flick,” as she kept calling it.
It was midnight, West Coast time, and the viewer numbers were still rising.
“This is hot stuff!” she shrieked in Jason’s ear.
On the haptic stage, Jason was down in engineering, fighting a simulated plasma fire outbreak inside the main reactor core control room. Intrepid was burning across several decks.
Tempturia was “dead,” as were half the crew. The plasma torpedo the fleeing warbird had fired had smashed right through shields already weakened by atmospheric contact. What had happened next was catastrophic. Torpedoes and weapons were offline. Casualties and fires were out of control on critical decks. Even the forward shield generator had been destroyed. They were now completely vulnerable. In other words, Intrepid was a giant sitting, burning, duck.
Hot blue plasma exploded and crackled across the futuristic warp core control room inside JasonDare’s iLenses. And there was also the director’s frantic shrieking to the suits via the text feed. And a message from his agent.
Jason was busy leading a fire control team into the heart of the inferno. The chief engineer was “dead” also. Even though he was an Academy Award-winning star, he, like the rest of the actors, including Jason, had to abide by the rules of the Starfleet Empires game universe. Internal casualties were randomly assigned by the game’s servers. The actors were, after all, really only player characters. And like all players worldwide, they were free to make a new character once they were “killed.”
Except the new character wasn’t necessarily part of the show.
The network had wanted to dump the engineer, Sir Wally Bingham, anyway, thought Jason, and he remembered the “Youth Demographic Needs” email the studio never meant the public to see that had gotten loose after some other big time actor’s cloud had been hacked. It was a reminder to Jason that everyone dies, not just the actor they’d wanted to force out, but also the exec who got blamed for revealing the truth about what the studio had actually wanted to do.
Jason aimed the foam-spraying hose at the raging plasma, improv-ing because all of it wasn’t actually real, the foam-spraying hose fire-control system and the towering inferno raging in front of him. Then he began to improv moving the hose back and forth over the spreading flames in his iLens.
He had time to blink and check his agent’s message with a retinal flick.
“Yo, buddy,” it began, which was his agent’s way of fraternally delivering bad news, or so it had been in the past. “Yo, buddy, you need to beat that chick commanding the aliens. Don’t let them talk you into this disaster episode the director’s pitching the network, bro. That’s weak cheese. Not good for your career. Studio doesn’t want a Thundaar who cuts his losses. They want a Thundaar who fights and wins. You need to put this player down. Her gamertag is CaptainMara. Do it now, or never, buddy. Comprende?”
They were not buddies. But Jason knew what the guy meant. When his agent started using Spanish to make a point, it was serious.
“Wong,” said Jason, as he mimed tapping his communicator. “How long till we can get back underway?”
“We’re shot to pieces, Captain. Best we can do is warp five.” Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul. But I do love thee! And when I love thee not, Chaos is come again.
“Where’s the warbird?” Jason dropped the hose and ran toward the lift. Another simulated explosion rocked the engineering set.
“Jason, buddy,” mewled the director in his ear. “Where’re you going, man? We’ve got something here. We can turn this into an Emmy. You get to save the ship from disaster. We’re already loading in some injured extras over on the other set. We’re writing a speech…”
“Maximum sensor range,” replied a stoic Wong.
“Catch her!” ordered JasonDare as he stepped into the turbolift. The doors would close and he would be off camera. Then he could walk over to the haptic bridge set.
“We have no weapons, sir,” replied Wong with all the gravity of a Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts Polonius.
No sudden snappy dialogue provided by the eight writers appeared in Jason’s iLens. He was flying by the seat of his pants on this one. Moving too fast for anything to be carefully planned ahead. Momentum is what I need, reflected Jason, as he stared into one of the microdrone cameras that always followed him on set and prepared to deliver his next line, feeling vaguely heroic.
“Let me worry about that, Mr. Wong.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
BattleBabe had the captain’s chair. Mara had logged out for an hour. She needed some food and rest. She needed to think. Her smartphone told her it was half-past midnight. Five hours to go. Flight time to Starbase 19 was a little under two hours. There was only one problem: the Federation cruiser was still chasing them.
For a moment, as she sat on her bed, the building felt unusually quiet for a Friday night. She called Siren and waited. She could hear the delicate pad of furry paws across the rubber faux-tile floor, and a moment later the cat leapt into her lap and began to purr.
BattleBabe and LizardofOz were for cutting and running. There was no way, they argued, that Cymbalum could defeat Intrepid in battle. That they’d gotten a lucky shot off was a fluke. That wouldn’t happen again. Drex, on the other hand, was all for meeting a “glorious and beautifully violent end this time.”
Varek had remained silent.
And there were always the five thousand MakeCoins to consider. That just didn’t happen every day. That was game-changing, life-changing money. Colby the business major turned escort could take Mara to a great store and get her the perfect interview outfit for just a portion of Mara’s cut of the booty. And then she could get… a real job.
And then…
Everything was possible.
A voice inside her, the voice o
f some mean boy or girl from the past, from one of the many public schools and foster homes, spoke up.
“And you think everything is really possible for someone like you?”
Hush, she told the voice. And it did.
This was not the moment to get carried away, or put down, by past ghosts.
If she could beat Intrepid, the most famous ship in the game, a ship run by the best players who were like real live movie stars, if she could beat them in one pass and give them a face full of plasma torpedo to remember her by, then yes, “everything” might just be possible, tonight.
That mean child from the past, a mere voice always deep inside, and just behind, said nothing. But that didn’t mean it was gone.
They never really leave, thought Mara.
She took out some carrot sticks and ate them. She fed Siren and found herself logging in, not really knowing what she was going to do next. Knowing the crew would want a plan, a decision, fight or flight, when she appeared back on the bridge. Not knowing what that decision was yet.
But knowing one must be made, soon.
She donned the Razer Dragon Eyes.
***
“Captain on the bridge,” announced BattleBabe as her avatar moved across the shadowy green and gray bridge back to her weapons console.
For a moment no one said anything.
“Status of Intrepid,” ordered Mara.
“Closing,” began the Drex. “And she’s got most of her weapons back online, Captain. Energy signatures indicate she’s pushing her reactor hard. But we might just get lucky. She may explode, taking us with her when she finally catches up.” The crystalline Drex returned to its sensor viewfinder. “And, on an even worse note, there’s absolutely no place for us to hide this time!”
